This must be immediate and terrifying, right?
Climate tipping points near for Greenland, but it’s not too late to save ice sheet, researchers say
New research suggests the Greenland ice sheet is on track to cross a critical threshold that could cause runaway melting, but that it’s also possible the threshold will be crossed temporarily, cooling down the planet and ultimately returning the ice sheet to a stable state.
Got that? It could happen, but, you could also get the totally opposite effect. Because research “suggests”. Exactly as the Scientific Method works, right?
The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, underscore the importance of limiting the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (about 2.7 Fahrenheit) — or returning to that level, or below, as quickly as possible if humanity exceeds it.
“If we change the temperature back fast enough, we don’t necessarily commit to a system change,” Nils Bochow, a climate scientist at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø and the lead author of the study, said in an interview. “We have time to reverse temperatures from this runaway effect.”
The Greenland ice sheet is one of more than a dozen theoretical climate tipping points — rapid, irreversible or abrupt changes — that keep some scientists up at night. And the findings, while alarming, add to a drumbeat refrain from many climate advocates: Urgency is essential, but it’s not too late to avoid the worst of climate change.
The research suggests the critical threshold for the Greenland ice sheet is between 1.7 and 2.3 degrees C of global warming. Bochow said humanity would have 100 years — perhaps more — to cool down and avoid locking in positive feedbacks that would intensify Greenland’s melting. He said that crossing the threshold, even temporarily, would likely cause several meters of sea level rise, but it would still be possible to stabilize the ice sheet.
So, we aren’t even being treated to the “doom in 100 years (when no one will be around to call our doomy prognostications out)” schtick: now it’s “well, maybe in 100 years, maybe more. We don’t know, we’re just throwing sh*t against the wall to scare people and keep our funding gravy train going.”
Read: Greenland Is About To Hit A Climate Doom Tipping Point Or Something »